Centre for Employment Studies Research

CESR Review: April 2008

Book reviews

(b) Giving: How each of us can change the world. Bill Clinton
(2007), NY: Knopf (240pp)

‘When I left the White House, I didn’t know exactly what I would
do, but I wanted to help save lives, solve important problems, and
give more young people the chance to live their dreams.’ In these
words from the introduction to his book on Giving, Bill Clinton
gives classic expression to Erik Erikson’s notion of
‘generativity’, middle aged people’s desire to contribute to the
well-being of future generations.

As a construct, generativity has so far received scant attention
from British investigators, although its practical manifestations
in mentoring and other ‘organisational citizenship behaviours’ have
been examined often enough. Generativity seems poised, however, to
become a central theme in research concerning ageing work forces
throughout the world, its prominence due in large part to a 20-year
programme of research by Dan McAdams, which has won generativity a
place in the mainstream of academic psychology. In The Redemptive
Self, McAdams introduces this research to a wider audience,
combining it with his well-known approach to narrative psychology
in an analysis of the part generativity plays in American adults’
self-defining life histories. Highly generative adults, it seems,
tell stories which emphasise early advantage (eg exceptional gifts
or favourable circumstances), empathy for others’ suffering, and
development of a coherent belief system which fuel the different
forms of social contribution, creative and nurturant, which
constitute a person’s legacy to the future. For such individuals,
few experiences are so negative that they cannot be transformed
into a story of transcendence.

McAdams discusses ways in which generative individuals’
optimistic ‘redemption narratives’ both tap and infuse American
culture. Early chapters explore cultural scripts which draw on the
defining stories of American history, characteristically American
expressions of religious belief, philosophies of self-help and
‘positive’ psychology, and Americans’ sense of being a chosen
people. The tone darkens as he contrasts these often naïve and
superficial accounts with slave narratives, racism endemic in
American society, and the personal stories of those whose lives
turn out badly. He discusses what he believes to be
characteristically American resistance to exploring hidden recesses
of the self, arguing that some of the appeal of the redemption
narrative may lie in the reassuring self-deception and happy
endings it allows. In short, at the same time as commending
generativity, he shows the ambivalence, murky depths, and lack of
self-awareness which often lurk beneath its surface.

Giving is Bill Clinton’s exhortation to active citizenship. Its
200-odd pages tell hundreds of stories of individuals (including
the very poorest) who have tried to make the world a better place.
Clinton has separate chapters on different forms and contexts of
giving (money, time, things, skills, reconciliation,
self-perpetuating gifts, and so on). In the last part of his book,
he touches briefly, and simply, on the institutional and economic
context of citizenship, including corporate giving and the role of
government. Very little of his analysis, however, addresses
structural inequalities between rich and poor, or systemic
indifference or resistance in the USA or elsewhere to the causes he
advocates (such as combating poverty and climate change). Whilst he
acclaims the givers, he appears to see no point in naming or
shaming the takers.

This is an activist’s not an academic’s book. There is much here
to challenge individual conscience and corporate policy.
Disappointingly, there is barely a glimmer of the political
analysis for which Clinton is famous. Rather, the book’s tone is
personal (Clinton has met most of the army of givers whose story he
tells) and inspirational; it is only very rarely self-critical – as
when he acknowledges having turned a blind eye to genocide in
Rwanda. It is steeped in the personal empathy for which he is also
famed. Although Clinton does not mention the word, his book, like
McAdams’, is about generativity. However, whilst Clinton may be
anything but naïve concerning the darker corners of the heart and
the morally ambiguous and self-serving nature of much American
self-narration, he does not probe beneath the surface of his
subject. He seems to have decided that this is not the place to
question motivations for giving, or the social structures which
make many people dependent on others’ gifts. Giving, he argues,
makes you happy – whether your gift takes the form of political and
social activism, volunteering for a local cause, or contributing to
charity. Readers who are troubled by this apparently simplistic
message may find it interesting that, according to McAdams’ and
others’ generativity research, he may often be right.